Identifying Trends in Discrimination against Women in the Workplace in Social Media

In collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Country Office for Indonesia, Pulse Lab Jakarta conducted a feasibility study to explore online data as a source of real-time signals of discrimination against women in the workplace. Keywords were used to filter public tweets related to discrimination, identifying four topics with a significant volume of discussions (over 100,000 tweets over three years); discrimination in job requirements, permission for women to work, perceptions on the appropriateness of different types of work for women, and the multiple burdens of working women. The study found that using these keywords, signals were not strong enough in ILO’s priority focus areas in Indonesia. Therefore, the tweets analyzed in the research did not lead to conclusive results. While most of the identified tweets corresponded to discriminatory job requirements, weak signals from messages coming from directly affected populations may imply that it is common for women workers to keep silent about their experience related to discrimination and violence in the workplace for various reasons including fear of losing the job and facing further discrimination.